^.y OLD COACHMAN 69 



rio-lit and the Exeter Road to the left in semi-suburban 

 fashion. Had it not Ijeen for the winter foo's this 

 level stretch would have invariably l)een the delight 

 of the old coachmen ; but when the roads were 

 wrapped in obscurity they were hard put to it to 

 keep on the highw^ay. Sometimes they did not even 

 succeed in doing so, l)ut drove instead into the 

 noisome ditches, filled with evil-smelling black mud, 

 which at that time divided the road from Hounslow 

 Heath. 



Charles Ward, whom the coaching critics of his 

 ao-e united to honour as an artist with ' the ribbons,' 

 drove the famous Exeter ' Telegraph ' the thirty miles 

 to Bagshot, reaching that village usually at 11 p.m., 

 and taking the up coach from thence to London at 

 four o'clock in the mornino-. He tells how in the 

 winter the mails had often to be escorted out of 

 London with flaring torches, seven or eight mails 

 following one another, the guard of the foremost 

 lighting the one following, and so on, travelling at 

 a slow pace, like a funeral procession. ' Many times,' 

 he says, ' I have been three hours going from London 

 to Hounslow. I remember one very foggy night, 

 instead of arrivino- at Bag-shot at eleven o'clock, I 

 did not get there till one in the morning. On my 

 way back to town, wdien the fog was very Ijad, I was 

 comino- over Hounslow Heath, when I reached the 

 spot where the old powder-mills used to stand. I 

 saw several liohts in the road and heard voices which 

 induced me to stop. The old Exeter mail, which 

 left Bagshot thirty minutes before I did, had met 

 with a singular accident. It was driven by a man 



